THE EFFECT OF PSYCHOLOGICAL CONTRACT FULFILLMENT (PCF) ON AFFECTIVE AND NORMATIVE COMMITMENT AMONG INDIAN AND BULGARIAN EMPLOYEES

The literature on psychological contract fulfilment (PCF) suggests that meeting the implicit and unwritten contractual expectations of employees should result in positive outcomes for organizations such as increased job satisfaction, organizational commitment, lower turnover of employees, among others. Most of the studies have been conducted in Western, individualistic societies where the nature of employment relationship is mostly transactional in nature compared to collectivist cultures where it is based on moral obligations and relational in nature. Thus, in collectivist cultures employees may take it for granted that employers should meet their psychological contract expectations. Thus, violations of PCF may have more profound negative effects on employee attitudes in collectivist cultures than in individualistic cultures and thus exhibit lower affective and normative commitments. We tested these hypotheses using two comparable samples from India, a relatively more individualistic country, and Bulgaria, a relatively more collectivistic country. The results indicated that when PCF were higher, there were no significant differences between the Indian and Bulgarian samples on their level of commitment. However, collectivist Bulgarians reported much lower affective and normative commitments than more individualistic Indians when PCF was lower. Thus, regardless of national culture, higher levels of PCF tend to have positive benefits for organizations yet breaches of PCF tend to have more negative consequences for organizations in relatively more collectivist cultures.